Projection And The Conservative Snowflake

Ad hominem attacks and cleverly-constructed insults are a perennial part of political discourse in this country. In recent years though, the attacks haven’t been quite as articulate as they used to be. While some insults, like being called a ‘cuck’ because I think ‘the God Emperor’ is a moron, can be entertaining; some of them are just weak, chief among them being the term ‘snowflake’. It’s an insult that derives mainly from the behavior of a fringe group of college students that have made it their goal in life to be offended over every little thing: claiming cafeteria lunches are cultural appropriation, calling people bigoted for not recognizing the 2,000-and-growing list of gender pronouns, etc. This term has taken on a wider meaning, used in the context of people who generally support the principle of political correctness. It’s not difficult to attack the fringes; any mindless buffoon with a microphone can do it- ask Tomi Lahren and Milo Yiannopoulos. But conservatives have delighted themselves so much in attacking the safe-space-dwelling liberal snowflakes that they’ve forgotten one thing; they started this phenomenon.

Conservatives practically have a monopoly on getting offended over the most trivial nonsense. Remember the time people lost their ever-loving minds because Starbucks announced they would begin a program to hire 10,000 refugees? They fumed about how they should hire 10,000 veterans instead: though they couldn’t be bothered to do a Google search which would show that they’re already doing that exact thing. But that’s only one example.

The Super Bowl has its share of political ads. This year, some touched on the immigration issue with subtlety, while some just outright went straight to the point about the wall being an un-American idea. A few years ago, one ad that really ruffled feathers was a Coca-Cola ad that showed “America the Beautiful” being sung in several different languages. It’s a nice ad that shows the multicultural diversity of the United States and our immigrant heritage. Predictably, there was a wave of fake outrage from the right, as if a song being sung in a language other than English (or in Sarah Palin’s deluded world, in ‘American’) were going to tear apart the fabric of democracy.

This is a common phenomenon. Here's an experiment: next time a corporation shows an ad on TV that portrays a gay or lesbian couple, go on social media. Take a look at how many conservatives are screaming (likely in all caps) and calling to boycott a continually-growing list of companies. One example was a promotional campaign done by Doritos, where a certain amount of its revenue would go to the It Gets Better project, an organization founded by columnist Dan Savage to prevent LGBT youth suicide. Conservatives screeched. A gay couple in a Wells Fargo ad? How dare they!

The last examples, although annoying, are relatively harmless (unless you consider the minor economic losses from a short-lived boycott). Some conservative-outrage storms, however, do have some real consequences. While it is one of the most verifiable concepts in science and serving as the backbone of modern biology, the theory of evolution is something that gets under the skin of a lot of conservatives. Despite the fact that humans share around 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, many conservatives have made it a goal to try and undermine evolution in public schools. If that doesn’t work, they try to shoe-horn their own ideas into the classroom, even though they are not scientific, don’t hold up to peer-review, and don't hold up in a court of law. Like the consensus on anthropogenic climate change, evolution shares practically universal scientific consensus; yet many conservatives do everything they can to undermine the process of science, simply because they don’t like the results.

This is all worth remembering when people like Tomi Lahren trot out the meme that liberals are just whiny babies. Or when Dana Perino unironically states that conservatives are driven by facts and logic, while liberals are driven by feelings. Conservatives have perfected the act of fake outrage like a fine art, an art form that only recently have liberals picked up on. And you know what they say, the best form of flattery is imitation.